Billionaires target America's Cup top prize

By Bernie Wilson
Associated Press

The tycoons are back in the America's Cup.

Team New Zealand is the two-time defending champion of the America's Cup, but several billionaires are out to dethrone them. Associated Press

An unprecedented number of syndicates are being backed by wealthy individuals hoping to use their liquid assets to lift the 151-year-old America's Cup off two-time defending champion Team New Zealand.

"Maybe we were all inspired by Ted Turner," joked Craig McCaw, the Seattle telecommunications billionaire who's supporting OneWorld Challenge, one of three U.S. syndicates.

If that's the case, then it could be a raucous regatta.

No fewer than four billionaires — at least they were above the threshold before the economy dipped below the waterline — are in this America's Cup. A fifth, Swedish media magnate Jan Stenbeck, died of a heart attack last month, but his Victory Challenge sails on with yachts named Orm and Orn.

The America's Cup has always attracted the super rich willing to spend large fortunes trying to win sailing's biggest prize.

Tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton challenged the New York Yacht Club five times from 1899 to 1930, losing each time. Tom Sopwith, of Sopwith Camel biplane fame, challenged and lost twice, in 1934 and 1937, both times to Harold Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt also beat Lipton in his final try.

There was Baron Marcel Bich of Bic pens fame, who failed four times to become the challenger, and of course "Captain Outrageous" himself, Turner, who defended the Cup in 1977.

With big pocketbooks, often bigger egos and accompanying idiosyncrasies, tycoons invariably make the America's Cup much more than just a regatta.

"Watching an America's Cup race in and of itself is boring," said Bill Koch, the Kansas oil tycoon who set the stuffy yachting world on its stern when he won the Cup in 1992, doing a good bit of steering himself.

"What's fascinating is watching all the interaction and personalities. The prefight antics and theatrics are much more interesting than the actual fight itself."

These are the Cup's new-monied captains of industry:

• Software mogul Larry Ellison, 58, of Oracle Corp., the so-called bad boy of Silicon Valley. Ellison, a champion ocean racer, has an $85 million campaign, financed mostly from his fortune. As if he needed the help, BMW chipped in an estimated $20 million and the name Oracle BMW Racing. Ellison has, however, lost about $35 billion in two years as Oracle slumped. In seven months, he has dropped from being the fifth-richest person in the world to being the ninth-richest American, at $15.2 billion, according to Forbes.
• McCaw, 53, went to Stanford and built the largest cellular company in the United States, McCaw Communications, in the early 1980s. McCaw is so low-key he's barely mentioned on OneWorld Challenge's Web site. "I'm too boring to be there," he said.
• Ernesto Bertarelli, 37, who has an MBA from Harvard, leads the second-ever syndicate from landlocked Switzerland, the whimsically named Alinghi Challenge. Bertarelli, head of a biotech conglomerate, hired away the best sailors money could buy, including two-time winning skipper Russell Coutts and his top lieutenant, Brad Butterworth, from Team New Zealand.

Back for a second try, but definitely among the deep pockets and strong personalities, is Patrizio Bertelli of Italy's Prada Challenge, whose wife, Miuccia Prada, heads the Italian fashion house Prada.

The nine challengers will spend about $500 million combined, and only one will make it through to face Team New Zealand in the America's Cup final starting Feb. 15.

A second Italian syndicate, Mascalzone Latino (roughly translated: Latin Rascal) and GBR Challenge from Britain are owned by multimillionaires. Rounding out the field are France, which is sponsored by a nuclear power company; and Mr. America's Cup himself, Dennis Conner, a professional sailor with a moderate $40 million budget who has just as good a chance of winning as the big-money boys.

Conner, a four-time winner, said this Cup will be much more competitive because of the tycoons. But he welcomes the challenge.

"I feel very fortunate to be able to compete at this level," Conner said. "Obviously I can't go run a company like Paul Allen and Craig McCaw and Larry Ellison. So how else could I compete against some of the smartest, most powerful people in the world? I couldn't, could I? But this allows me the opportunity."

Even before the racing started, Ellison had earned a spot in Cup lore when he said, "It's so cheap, I'm surprised more people don't do this."